


The Contrary Kind

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Commitment, Cultural Differences, M/M, Romance, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:26:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two unorthodox men share a rainy spring night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Contrary Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bullet2](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bullet2).



> Written for the 2011 Help Japan auction on LJ.

"Wine, tea, or brandy?" Albus muses aloud, buzzing drowsily around the sitting room like his namesake on a quiet spring night when the rain is pattering against the windows and the rest of the castle is asleep.

"Coffee, tea, or me," Severus quips idly from the sofa, turning a page in his book.

Albus pauses in his meandering, and without looking up, Severus senses the gaze upon his shoulders.

"As ever, Severus, I have no idea what you mean, but I like the way you think."

He can hear the smile in Albus's voice, and the corner of his own mouth rises slightly as a flush of arousal warms him far more thoroughly than the fire in the grate.

From the time he was a small boy in Spinner's End, Severus knew what "queer" meant. Bender. Poof. Shirt-lifter. It meant "strange." The sort of boy or man who would do it to another boy or man, or to an animal, or to anything at all. It was Ronald Tucker, who had gone to gaol and came back pale and nervous. It was Northrop Cookson, who was two years Severus's senior and talked too politely because he lived with his nan, or John Dewhurst, whose mother was a tart. It was Severus, who wore his hair long and dressed in mismatched, over-sized clothing.

Queer. As if the normality of his parents’ miserable marriage were anything to aspire to.

"Brandy," Severus says, holding his free hand out expectantly and keeping it there until the cool snifter is placed in his grasp.

Albus lingers behind him after delivering the glass, presumably intending to read over his shoulder. Or perhaps not. Warm, smooth fingertips brush a lock of hair back from Severus's face and trace the shell of his ear. Then they move slowly down the length of his neck, turning in small, feather-light circles until a crop of goose-flesh springs up beneath them.

Severus rolls his eyes and feigns continuing to read. He scans the pages with limited comprehension while Albus's thumb brushes slowly back and forth over the thin, sensitive skin just over where his carotid artery pulses.

He takes a drink of his brandy as Albus's fingers set to work on his collar.

"Aren't you going to have a drink, Headmaster?" Severus inquires casually.

"I find myself rather peckish all of a sudden, Severus."

Severus wets his lips, deciding he feels rather peckish himself. "You ought to take yourself to the kitchens and leave me to my reading, then."

Albus clucks his tongue. Another button and then another surrenders. "Don't be beastly, Severus. Come to bed."

He tilts his head back, looking up to find himself the subject of a sly, persuasive smile. Those fingers slip between the open buttons of his shirt, tracing his collarbone.

In mere moments, he is in the dark, cool bedroom, stripping hurriedly out of his clothes as Albus's maddeningly patient hands touch every newly bared part of him. His mouth quests blindly, chasing the shadows of warm, dry skin and soft whiskers and smiling lips.

He is pushed back against the mounds of pillows, covered up and held down. At a single caress of his thigh, he spreads his legs with shameful alacrity, baring himself eagerly in the darkness as he's touched, as his hands grasp greedily. Queer, yes, the very definition of it, and in this moment it seems perfectly ridiculous, for in the scheme of dingy houses and dirty blood, dark deeds and a desperate love for phantoms, what's done in this bed is the most blessedly normal pleasure he has ever pursued.

*

  
Severus's lips taste of brandy, and his skin is so pale as to very nearly glow in the dark. He could light the lamps if he so chose; he does like to look upon Severus in firelight, when those ungainly angles make handsome, striking chiaroscuro. But there is pleasure in the darkness, and in knowing the limbs and lips and sex of another man as well as he knows the restfulness of his own bed.

"Lovely..." he murmurs, his mouth against smooth, youthful skin and his slick fingers rubbing slowly over Severus's cleft, eliciting soft, rough crow-caw cries.

Once, perhaps, his pursuits were more adventurous. But he is no longer a young man, and where the spirit is still willing, the joints are peevish in the cold, damp weather that is Hogsmeade's speciality. With Severus, there has only been this bed. And, he realises with a small note of surprise, with this bed, there has only been Severus.

He smiles against the faint dip below Severus's ribs, rather taken aback at his own constancy. He always knew that he would never marry, even though he knew just as well that it would be expected of him. He was the eldest son, bearer of a dying name. Never mind his inclination; in the world in which he was raised, _that_ had nothing to do with marriage. Even better to dally with young men, perhaps, to keep the waters from being muddled with bastardy. It was the household hearth—and bed—that mattered.

No, it was not his inclination that had led him to other duties. It was the empty seat at the head of his family's table. It was his haunted sister. It was a beautiful, laughing boy. Circumstances had conspired to make Albus incapable of convention.

"Hurry up," Severus snaps, gasping, grasping at his shoulders, hardly the blushing young bride.

Albus chuckles breathlessly and continues his idle kisses, wondering to himself not for the first time how his father would have advised him in some other world, in that other life when the Dumbledore name had meant something very different. Would he have been urged to marry for social position, or given leave to wed for affection? Would he have been steered towards a cousin, kindly led to find a help-meet, arranged in despair to a spinster or young widow?

"I do not," Severus says pointedly, his sharp, tense limbs wrapping tightly around Albus, "have all night."

He is put in mind of the way his mother spoke to his father in the days when they were still a household, with that razor-blade tongue and her dark, flashing eyes. How it had made Father stare at her with humbled, wordless wonder, and how it had made the child Albus had so briefly been gasp in exquisite humiliation, for surely it was Father who was frightening and unknowable, out in the world of men, and Mother who had feet of clay from the view behind her skirts.

Before he can retort, however, Severus's knees tighten about his hips, and he is firmly rolled onto his back. Severus curls above him, tense and almost palpably hungry, one hand braced against the headboard and the other grasping Albus's sex before he sinks down upon it with a richly satisfied hum.

“Oh, my dear boy...”

Their bodies rock together in the darkness over and over again, the slick sounds of oiled skin and wet mouths and the dry, quickening echo of their breathing nearly drowning out the rustle of the bedclothes, and the creaking of the mattress, and the slow, shifting sands of the hourglass. Albus closes his eyes, his hands tracing the dear, familiar lines of lean thighs and a firm backside and a trembling stomach—the hot, hard sex that presses urgently into his grip.

One hand pauses on a sharp hipbone, the other rising. His fingertips brush against a beardless cheek, and he feels Severus turn away.

"I do love you," Albus murmurs, just softly.

And perhaps Severus does not hear him over panting breath and racing heart, for he does not reply, but a rough, startled sound slips from his throat, and his pale body arches, and Albus can feel the helpless spending as it drips upon his naked stomach.

He smiles in delight, hands pressed to that trembling form, and in this moment, his body flushed and needful and his heart full, he can imagine nothing better than the life he is leading: more dear children in his care than any man could hope to sire, and a warm marriage bed in his dotage.


End file.
